For this 3 Things entry, let’s take examine creative sales boosting tips retailers are using on their product pages to squeak out more conversions.

Multiple Add to Cart Buttons

If there’s one thing I learned as a salesperson after working 5 years in retail, it’s that you should ask for the sale early and often. On a product page, I suppose the Add to Cart button would be roughly equivalent to asking for the sale. Most product pages contain an add to cart button in a prominent location at the top right corner of the page.

However, what happens if a visitor scrolls down to read a product description, view more images, or to read customer reviews? There is now no longer a call to action in sight. Lately, I ‘ve been seeing quite a few product pages with multiple Add to Cart buttons. Checkout TigerDirect’s product page for an example of multiple add buttons.

Low-Stock Indicators

In a retail environment, it’s not difficult to ascertain how many of a given item is in-stock, you simply look on the shelf or ask a sales associate. But how many eCommerce stores take advantage of consumers fear of stockouts? In other words, if there’s only a few left in stock, why doesn’t the site encourage you to order NOW!?

T-shirt seller Glarkware drives urgency with their Stock Level indicator available on every product page. After the customer clicks their size, they are shown an estimate of how many are available in that size. I don’t know for certain, but I’m guessing that a low stock indicator discourages customers from abandoning that item in the shopping cart.

Future Gift Reminders

The next best thing to selling a product today is selling it tomorrow. Delightful Deliveries, an online gift oriented store, boasts an innovative Gift Reminder tool on every product page, allowing customers to setup email notifications reminding them to purchase an item on a future date. Customers can choose the occasion (birthday, anniversary, etc), the date, and how many days in advance to be notified.

7 Responses to “3 Product Page Sales Boosters” by Justin Palmer

I really like #2 – using color coded bars to show a low stock indicator is cool. I can imagine some merchants playing around with that to create some artificial urgency, but in general, a very nice tool for customers.

What do you think of removing navigation from a product page? I’m doing that with a site that will go live in a month and initially will be getting PPC and shopping engine traffic. Do you think it will help or hurt conversions?

Removing the navigation on a product page might be risky, I guess it depends. If the path the visitor used to get there was highly qualified, then it might be a good idea. However, if you remove the nav for a casual browser, it will most likely frustrate them.